Pothivelu Pandaram is known as a successful and God-fearing man about town – he has a loyal wife, three daughters and ample money to pay for their dowries. However, it is an open secret that his success is fuelled by a tawdry yet deeply profitable trade – for he owns a group of physically deformed beggars and places them outside various temples to make money for him. The beggars are mere ‘items’ to Pandaram, hardly human, to be bought and sold like cattle. But when the novel descends right into their world –the world of the ‘abyss’ – and places the reader in their midst, it takes on a marvellous, unexpected turn.
Bitter, black, raw and yet laced with humour and tenderness, The Abyss (Ezhaam Ulagam) is one of the most acclaimed works of the great Tamil writer Jeyamohan. It was adapted into an acclaimed film in 2009 called Naan Kadavul (I am God) which won a National Film Award for its director. Written with an unflinching eye and suffused with a deep existential longing, it is an extraordinary novel – in its terrain, its fundamental questions about humanity and its depiction of human suffering and liberation.
Product details
Publisher: Juggernaut (10 April 2023); Juggernaut
Paperback: 352 pages
ISBN-10: 9393986525
ISBN-13: 978-9393986528
Item Weight: 288 g
Dimensions: 21.5 x 14 x 2.3 cm
Country of Origin: India
Net Quantity: 1 Count
Packer: AAJ Enterprises Pvt Ltd, Khasara No 7/24,25/2,8/21, Safiabad Khari Manjat,Gulzar Bhawan, Sonipat - Narela Road, Liwan, Sector 36, Sonipat, Haryana 131001,PHONE: 085869 67796
Generic Name: Books
About the Author
B. Jeyamohan is a pre-eminent writer in modern Tamil literature.His most significant work yet is a twenty-six part reimagination of the Mahabharata called Venmurasu (The White Drum), one of the longest literary works in the world. Apart from other landmark novels such as Vishnupuram (1997) and Kotravai (2005), his body of work includes more than three hundred short stories, many volumes of literary criticism, biographies, travelogues, introductory texts to Indian and Western literature and essays on heritage and philosophy.He has received many honours, including the Akilan Memorial Prize, the Katha Samman, the Sanskriti Samman and the Iyal Award (Canada).
Suchitra Ramachandran writes fiction in Tamil and translates between Tamil and English. Her work has appeared in journals such as Asymptote and Narrative Magazine. The Abyss is her firstfull-length translated work to be published. Suchitra lives in Basel, Switzerland.
Bahuleyan Jeyamohan
Born/Date of Birthday: 22 April 1962
Place of Birth: Nagercoil, Tamil Nadu
Occupation: Writer, novelist, critic
Language: Tamil, Malayalam
Nationality: Indian
Subject: Literature, philosophy
Notable works: Venmurasu, Kotravai
Spouse: Arunmozhi Nangai (m. 1991)
Children: Ajithan, Chaitanya
Official Website: jeyamohan.in
Bahuleyan Jeyamohan (born 22 April 1962) is an Indian Tamil and Malayalam language writer and literary critic from Nagercoil in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu.
His best-known and most critically acclaimed work is Vishnupuram, a fantasy set as a quest through various schools of Indian philosophy and mythology. In 2014, he started his most ambitious work Venmurasu, a modern renarration of the epic Mahabharata and successfully completed the same, thus creating the world's longest novel ever written.
His other well-known novels include Rubber, Pin Thodarum Nizhalin Kural, Kanyakumari, Kaadu, Pani Manidhan, Eazhaam Ulagam and Kotravai. The early major influences in his life have been the humanitarian thinkers Leo Tolstoy and Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. Drawing on the strength of his life experiences and extensive travel around India, Jeyamohan is able to re-examine and interpret the essence of India's rich literary and classical traditions.
Born into a Malayali Nair family in the Kanyakumari district that straddles Tamil Nadu and Kerala, Jeyamohan is equally adept in Tamil and Malayalam. However, the bulk of his work has been in Tamil. Jeyamohan's output includes nine novels, ten volumes of short-stories/plays, thirteen literary criticisms, five biographies of writers, six introductions to Indian and Western literature, three volumes on Hindu and Christian philosophy and numerous other translations and collections. He has also written scripts for Malayalam and Tamil movies.
Personal life
Jeyamohan was introduced to Arunmozhi Nangai as a reader and married her in 1991. Their son Ajithan was born in 1993 and daughter Chaitanya in 1997.
Early life
Jeyamohan was born on 22 April 1962 in Thiruvarambu of Kanyakumari District, Tamil Nadu, to S.Bahuleyan Pillai and B.Visalakshi Amma. Bahuleyan Pillai was an accounts clerk in the Arumanai registrar's office. Visalakshi Amma hailed from a family of trade-unionists. Jeyamohan's siblings were an elder brother and a younger sister. Bahuleyan's family followed him around on his work-related transfers to Thiruvattar and Arumanai towns in the Kanyakumari district.
Very early on, Jeyamohan was inspired by his mother to take up writing. Jeyamohan's first publication during schooldays was in Ratnabala, a children's magazine, followed by a host of publications in popular weeklies. After high school, Jeyamohan was pressured by his father to take up commerce and accountancy in college. The suicide of a close friend drove him to drop out of college and constantly travel the country in search of physical and spiritual experience. He supported himself by taking up odd jobs and writing in pulp magazines all the while reading voraciously. He took up a temporary job at the Telephones department in Kasargode where he became close to the Leftist trade union circles. He received many of his formative ideas on historiography and literary narrative during that period.
Visalakshi and Bahuleyan committed suicide within a month of each other in 1984, and this drove Jeyamohan further into an itinerant lifestyle. He met writer Sundara Ramasamy in 1985 who took on the role of a mentor and encouraged him to take up writing seriously. Jeyamohan also got another mentor in the form of Aattoor Ravi Varma who sensitized him to the delicate balance between art and life. In parallel, Jeyamohan was an avid reader of Indian classics and philosophical texts like the Bhagavad Gita.
Politics
Jayamohan supported the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) party during the 2014 Indian general election.
